I recently shared very diverse pancreatic
cancer screening guidelines for people with Peutz-Jeghers syndrome (PJS) at this blog.

Now, breast cancer screening gets a
spotlight. Though the guidelines don't vary as much region-by-region, there is
a startling difference between those of St. Mark's in London and other medical
experts. And, again, screening guidelines for Americans are much more
aggressive, beginning at a younger age, using more technology and done at more
frequent intervals.

Note: All breast cancer screening guidelines are for women with PJS, though men with PJS have been diagnosed with breast cancer and many have had swollen breast tissue (gynecomastia) as boys and/or men.

Thursday, March 10, 2016

This sounds humorous, but it should be a very
serious topic for all of us. Pancreatic cancer risk in people with PJS is
astronomical – our risk is possibly over 100 times that of the general
population.

While pancreatic cancer is rare in the
general population and generally affects older people, in PJS it is fairly
common and often affects younger folks and even those who don’t have
complicating risk factors like smoking.

Different research groups study different
populations of PJS people to arrive at the high-risk estimate – the
geographical and historical differences are startling.

More startling to me, a person living with
PJS who’s read the medical literature for decades, is how all over the map the
cancer screening guidelines for pancreatic cancer are.